


Deft Notation

by rukafais



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, This includes mentions of:, a messed up war that killed an awful lot of people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 18:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19469464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: Ekkehardt Gehring writes like he's preparing for a history lesson, even if it's only for his own benefit.





	Deft Notation

**Author's Note:**

> I finally figured out AO3 has an original fiction tag so like, I guess I'm putting this up here mostly so this thing doesn't languish forever in google doc hell/on my harddrive.
> 
> Ekkehardt, House Gehring, and the unnamed setting - at least this part of it, belong to me.

[The writing is neat and clear. The notebook is well kept, if plain.]

Sixteen houses once split the land in sixteen ways. Over time, sixteen became twelve, and then twelve became one and the remnants of five others.

Four of the houses were already lost before the Crimson Calm, as we call the thirty years before the descent into the Conquerors’ War. I will detail them here, as best I can, though these were before my time.

**_House Frost_ **

A house renowned for their magical prowess. They ruled their mountainous lands with heavy-handed justice, inspiring fear to do good in their people. One of the four houses of which there is little to no trace left in the present day, their mountain stronghold has been abandoned for many years. What little of their regalia and rituals are left suggest a strong affinity with the mountains, and perhaps a tradition of entombing their dead inside them, due to repeated imagery of people being carried there.

Or perhaps I am giving them a little too much credit. I have heard that there are certain sealed caves and tunnels dug into the mountain’s insides, after all.

**_House Ahlberg_ **

A house renowned for martial prowess and strong leadership. They patrolled their hilly lands and had no fortifications for their noble families. Their traditions were oral rather than written; as a result, many of the old folk tunes passed down through the people that now live on those lands are versions of the ceremonial Ahlberg songs.

Though little trace of their lineages now exist, it's said they went into the hills and never returned, and even now sleep in barrows beneath the earth, waiting for the end of days so that they may rule as true lords.

Their traditional structures have been left untouched for decades. _  
_

**_House Anker_ **

A house that lived on the seas, and made lonely cliffside towers and lighthouses their symbols of office. Their distinctive boats and colourful sails were once a subject of many ballads and stories, and the signs of their passing can be seen all up and down the coastline. They fished, hunted the things in the deep, and were loud and bright.

Their lineage persisted in House Sealfor, but despite the wealth of logbooks, maps and other works they left behind in their towers, there is little to no record of the days when House Anker's people suddenly vanished from the waters, leaving behind the empty hulls of their boats.

Of the shipwrecks that eventually washed ashore during that time, many were found to have been deliberately sunk, despite the obvious care that had gone into making each and every one.

**_House Sturm_ **

A house known and feared for their magical power, they subjugated several other houses to their will during their brief and tumultuous control of much of the region. Claiming to be able to control the weather, they took advantage of the constant storms to perform rituals that created what they called 'lightning’s children’.

Though there is little record of both these rituals and what they produced, the stories of lightning striking to breathe life into objects or bodies that lack them are too common - and too similar - to ignore. It is still a strongly held belief among the territories where House Sturm once held sway that bodies should only be buried in clear weather.

Though those people they enslaved and made servants and playthings of still persist, there is nothing left of House Sturm. They came to a seemingly violent end, likely at the hands of those they tormented; their distinctive iron castles are twisted, blackened shells of their former glory.

**“Crimson Calm”**

Thirty years of uneasy peace settled over the region - it seems to have been directly linked to the rebellions that eventually destroyed House Sturm’s stranglehold over most of the lands. While this was called a ‘calm’, the houses that remained were clearly preparing for a war that would decide an ultimate ruler, as many of them were unable to stand the idea of rivals. 

It was within this period that I was born, and later lost what little family I had. As a child who lived on Gehring’s lands, they took responsibility for me instead, and I was taken in and trained as a mage and servant.

The twelve houses that divided the land are listed here: Sealfor, Bähr, Förstner, Frei, Vogel, Falkenrath, Weber, Schultheis, Esser, Diefenbach, Hasse, and Gehring.

**_House Sealfor_ **

Founded by descendants of House Anker who were seemingly spared from the 'curse' that overtook the rest of their bloodline. Named after the colour of the moonlit waters their ancestors so loved, House Sealfor cemented its reputation as a merchant house, specialising in trade across the waters they coveted.

In the later years of the war, they gained a much darker reputation for more black market trades, and in selling bloody artifacts that came with high, terrible costs. Sealfor's nobility began to disappear - or worse, to show signs of aquatic change - and they began to turn on both their allies and each other, dragging their most coveted people into the deep with them.

In the aftermath of the war, only three abandoned children were left behind in the rush to obey - or flee - the sea-calling that had plagued their parents and caretakers. Despite the clear abnormalities in appearance they possess - fins, strange eyes, and so on - they are healthy in all other respects. They do not appear to need immersion to survive, though they have taken extremely well to swimming and caused me no end of stress before their more abnormal features began to manifest and I realised their true aptitude for water.

**_House Bähr_ **

Fierce, war-hungry fighters who preferred force to diplomacy. Named after the animal that emblazoned their crest, the boar, they swiftly gained a reputation even in the uneasy quiet that blanketed the land for three decades as vicious, bloody warriors. Even their nobility was prone to bouts of violence due to their 'fierce blood'.

When the war began, other houses were quick to try and gain their favour and allegiance, as their martial prowess was extensive. As a result of this courting, House Bähr grew bolder in their viciousness, but the enemies they gained eventually overwhelmed them. In their last stand, it was the Iron Spear of House Gehring who struck down Bähr's lord.

It was said that those of the true lineage of Bähr could shed their human skins as if they were nothing more than cloaks, revealing the truer and more powerful face hidden within. Accounts described them as tusked and terrifying, with 'eyes like coal' and rough, bristled hides; when they succumbed to death, they became twisted hybrids of man and beast.

To my knowledge, though they may have seeded their ability in the children of others with the occasional inadvisable tryst that nobles are prone to...succumb to…...the true strain of ‘fierce blood’ that House Bähr’s nobility was renowned for was eliminated during the war.

**_House Förstner_ **

A solid and serious house who retreated into the forests they ruled over, making their lands their ultimate strongholds. Some strange bond with the inherent hungriness of their woods allowed them to defend themselves fiercely, though it gave them the unfortunate drawback of being rooted to one very obvious location, and it became their downfall in the end.

They detested politics of any kind, preferring to honor no allegiances and not interfere in anything that did not involve them. As a result, I know very little about them as a house, though I have heard that they apparently took the idea of ‘blood and bone’ for fertilizing their clearly blossoming horticultural pursuits incredibly seriously. The trees on their borders where carrion birds flocked to squabble over hanging corpses did send a very clear message to what they thought of outsiders.

They were overtaken by troops they were unable to stop or destroy in the later years of the war, all of which who brought fire with them. The castle that once housed the noble line, and all their buildings, are still choked with thorns, ash, and the charred remains of the dead.

A later expedition by House Gehring did procure a single seed, kept safe in a place decorated as if it was a normal human nursery. We have planted it in a pot and and it has grown somewhat, though I feel slightly foolish talking to it as if it was a regular child. It does seem...healthier for the activity, though I cannot help but feel this sort of thing needs a gardener more than a caretaker.

[A note has been put in much later.]

It turned out to be a child of some description, if an unconventional one. I suppose I feel slightly less foolish now?

**_House Frei_ **

One of the houses previously subjugated by House Sturm.

A house that gained a reputation for having unusual appetites and a great hunger for new experiences that later turned visceral. Their nobility had either strange rules for conduct or no rules at all, as they believed it ‘restricted the raw purity of experience’. I rarely came into contact them before the war, so I know little about them before their descent, but the one constant of their existence was that they were perfectly happy to be allies with anyone as long as they went along with whatever new entertainment they had in mind. I am forced to assume their dinner parties and balls were once more normal and not a morass of cannibalistic nonsense and indulgent violence. Apparently they produced great works of art, intricate and fine, but I admit I saw very little of it unless blood, bone and gristle splattered all over the tables and floors count. (Their poetry was a little too flowery for my tastes, but otherwise perfectly serviceable as entertainment.)

Their easily-bought alliances and appetite for violence were ultimately unable to protect them in the later years of the war; though they proved surprisingly apt (and apparently horrifying) combatants, they were eventually eliminated through sheer magical force, as their lack of discipline meant that many of their mages destroyed themselves in battle. No trace of House Frei remains, though their halls and structures stand empty still as reminders of their existence.

**_House Vogel_ **

A house previously subjugated by House Sturm.

A house known for its craftsmen and musicians, with the latter being highly sought for entertainment at lavish parties. The noble line of House Vogel often wore feathers and incorporated bird thematics into their clothing, their artisans creating truly elaborate - and wearable - works of art for their superiors to wear. 

They were skilled artists and artisans, specialising in performing on theater and stage; they used this artistic skill when the war began to arrange their dances and compositions in strange ritual patterns that compelled others to do their bidding.

They were particularly fond of birds escaping cages as a motif, possibly due to their former suffering under the rule of House Sturm. In the later years of the war, the bird escaping the cage became an ominous symbol, as it was often the only thing left, burned into the ground, at the former site of one of their performances. Despite this odd preoccupation with ritual sacrifice of their own people, they were fairly diplomatic, if distant. Their preparation for their ‘great work’ seemed to leave them with no time to care for their children, and I often found myself taking care of them on my occasional visits.

In their last, grand performance, at the climax of the piece and play, an abrupt and terribly violent distortion happened to those on stage, something that caused a rupture of magical power. Their changed forms were only visible for a brief moment before vanishing, but - I am spared from nausea because I lack a stomach, but I did feel somewhat ill after witnessing it.

They left behind their only heirs, who have yet to speak after the trauma they underwent of seeing everyone they knew disappear, and with those twin children lies the only living remainders of House Vogel. 

Apparently they were supposed to be transformed into something transcendental, but it seems their efforts were for naught. If I were a less realistic person, I might hope that they died and thus escaped a more terrible fate, but I doubt it.

**_House Falkenrath_ **

A house renowned for their prowess as spies and information gatherers. They prized information above all, and used much of it to keep other houses under control. It was never clear how much they truly knew, and how much they simply guessed...and how much of what they knew they tortured out of other people. Unwilling to let little things like morals stand in the way of gathering information, they turned to both physical and magical means to gain their confessions, and became only more abhorrent as they became more desperate for control over the other warring houses.

The head of House Falkenrath was personally responsible for my suffering, and was infamous for his hate of loyalists and their ‘stubborn tongues’. I cannot say that I wasn’t pleased to be the one who killed him, since he took explicit pleasure in my pain. With his death, it was the beginning of the end for their information network, and the House eventually collapsed under the weight of its own betrayals and blackmailing.

They showed distaste for ‘needless, senseless violence’, refusing to fight openly with other houses ( _but of_ _**COURSE, TORTURE** is **FINE** , the **HYPOCRITES**_ ) and as such, concentrated their power mostly in their mages and assassins. In all-out warfare, and in the face of undead troops that their range of traps had little effect on, their defenses were breached quickly, and they fell. Little remains of them but the still trap-laden buildings they were so proud of, now useless except for amusements and perhaps training.

**_House Weber_ **

One of the houses that was previously controlled by House Sturm.

Crafters and weavers who used their unique talents to defend their house when the war began in earnest, using expertly constructed devices to give them more arms to weave with. They made magic into nets and strings, using them to ensnare the living and control the dead, creating a fighting force many times larger than invaders anticipated. However, the strain of controlling such magic, and both living and dead targets, meant that their master mages often cannibalised themselves in times of crisis. I saw it in person only once, and it was desperately unpleasant. It also looked excruciatingly painful, which is unfortunate. Many ended up with missing limbs or more, becoming more prosthetic than living flesh.

They were instrumental in the destruction of House Bähr and Schultheis, but paid a heavy price; it required more magic than they had ever used before, and in desperation they turned to their own people - who willingly gave their lives - to fuel their greatest working. The remnants of House Weber are little more than a handful of artisans and mages who endured the rest of the war attempting to rebuild their destroyed legacy, as the noble line did not survive.

Apparently their lords planned to have children only in a world where they would be safe, but on such broken promises is tragedy made.

**_House Schultheis_ **

A house known for their strong stance on ‘abominations and the unholy’. I would say that might be strange in a land where such things were common, but remembering the horrors the Conquerors’ War unleashed...I am forced to admit that it was perhaps not so odd. Still, it was merely an oddity before they went on a crusade that resulted in the swift demise of House Förstner, among other things, and left burning scars in the land with their judicious use of light magic. They acted almost feverish with an inner fire that would not abate; I have to wonder if some other force was at fault...or they filled themselves with light in order to avoid something else from creeping in.

It was said that House Schultheis had a secret history they refused to divulge. I suspect that House Falkenrath threatened to unearth that secret, and turned Schultheis upon inconvenient enemies...but that is only my own theory. I may never know for sure.

Recent examination of the foundations on which House Schultheis’ famously unbreachable castle was built found something rather intriguing. It seems like many people were killed to make it, and most likely buried within the foundations to seal some pact or ritual. The most interesting thing is that many of them bore what may be the original version of House Schultheis’ own crest - perhaps the secret they guarded so fearfully was that they took Schultheis’ title and standing for themselves. The dead can still speak - and harbor a desire for vengeance - even after many years, so necromancy would certainly have been a problem for them.

Regardless, there is nothing left of Schultheis - both the original line and the possible impostor line. They burned themselves out on crusades and left themselves unguarded, allowing themselves to be taken by surprise and systematically eliminated.

**_House Esser_ **

A house who created mechanisms of some sort. What they did before the war, I’m not entirely sure, but they certainly exacerbated it by providing war machines for the highest bidder. They cared mostly about commerce and money, and very little about anything else besides keeping the designs for their machines secret so that nobody else could construct them for themselves. As the war progressed, they moved from simple engines of destruction to far more complex ones, delving deep into the study of necromancy and what little House Sturm left behind of their own creations. I have very little interest in mechanisms that aren’t locks to pick, so I will be brief here and say that I was forcibly educated upon having to find and destroy the source of such things about how cruel you can be to something in the name of keeping it alive.

To give credit where credit is due, they were also willing to put such things on themselves, but I am certain that it underwent much testing with people much less willing to be ‘’’ **improved** ‘’’ before the nobility did it.

House Esser was eventually wiped out by other houses who saw their constant production of machines and endless greed as a threat, but they developed a significant break in their defenses when one of their most powerful creations rebelled after a chance meeting with an undead saint. It spread that desire to some of House Esser’s other war machines, ultimately resulting in their complete destruction.

Nothing remains of House Esser except some of their more benign mechanisms, and their great workshops that now lie broken and empty.

_**House Diefenbach** _

A house whose lineage came from ‘the deep’, according to their own family history. They were powerful mages, especially in manipulating water. Though many of them looked normal enough, those who spent too much time around them became entranced by them. In the later years of the war, the stranger parts of the lineage they had inherited began to show through, and swept through their servants like an infection - they injected their servants with their own blood through…’biting’ ( _I’ve no idea how you bite with a face full of tentacles. Frankly I would rather not know_ ). Unfortunately ‘drowning in your eyes’ was quite literal with House Diefenbach, as they had a signature ability to cause water to manifest where it wasn’t wanted in the body. Literal water, not bodily fluid in sickness. I should know, after staring at more corpses to determine their cause of death than I care to mention.

I have been (unwillingly) informed that the arrangements of tentacles sprouting from the face were more tasteful in Diefenbach’s nobility, but the one who continues to be endeared with me even several years after the war also tells me that they’re quite handsome themselves. I have more information about how these people eat than I ever desired, between dinner parties and this individual’s continued courtship despite my repeated and clearly expressed disinterest.

Diefenbach came through the war more intact than most others, with a handful of lesser nobility and some of their retainers still alive. They show no real interest in governing, however, and I believe those who still remain have begun to construct their own little seaside fortresses in the manner of House Anker (who they maintain are ‘distant cousins’).

**_House Hasse_ **

A house fleet and nervous as hares, possessed of a strange power that gave them a degree of superhuman strength and speed and the ability to change into winged creatures, at the cost of a strange sun-sickness. I treated some of them more than once, as they often hired themselves out to other houses as messengers. They were pacifists, unwilling to get involved with the war; once unrest began to spike they fled, leaving their lands and houses empty and willingly vacating their responsibilities and titles.

As far as I know, they still live - somewhere. But they went to ground long ago, and neither have nor desire any political power.

**_House Gehring_ **

The house I serve, and the only house who made it through the war. We were healers, once, and we only wished to help those who were sick.

It was a dream born of honor and a slight naivete, I admit. When the peace was kept, it was easy to do. We ignored politics in favor of our own duty to the injured and sick. When houses began to go to war against each other, they showed us what they thought of our willingness to help their enemies.

So my lords turned to necromancy, restoring and reconstructing those of us who died for our loyalty as the undead. They brought those children old enough to understand what was happening them back to a kind of life, now unkillable by many normal means. And we pointed our spears outwards, at those who thought honor meant we could be betrayed or exploited without consequence.

We outlasted our enemies, to our triumph, and our allies, to our regret. We survived. And, through survival, we ‘won’ the Conquerors’ War - though it would be folly to say that winning was worth the cost. My lords never desired to rule, only to live. But we have many more people to care for, and we must accept the responsibility.

_**“Conquerors’ War”** _

After the Crimson Calm came 15 years of tumultuous bloodshed that left scars on the land and caused many people to turn to the Church of the Sun in desperation, praying for deliverance from the horrors many of the noble houses had unleashed.

Those houses that still have surviving descendants present in this land are Diefenbach, Weber, Vogel, Förstner, and Sealfor. Of those five, three have only children left to inherit their titles, and Gehring cares for them now; they will be able to shoulder the burden of restoring their house to some semblance of normalcy, should they wish it, when they come of appropriate age.

_**The state of the undead** _

The aftermath of the war left many masterless and restless undead; those who lacked anyone to give them orders, and those who simply had a ravenous drive for survival and consumed all they could reach. Mindless undead troops were unfortunately something of a staple, as many houses went deeply into necromancy and mass reanimation; without their leaders, reanimated soldiers were left bereft, and often formed primitive bands in an attempt to fulfill their last function. The ones that were killed by necromantic magic and reanimated without the caster’s intention behind it were merely walking stomachs, sustaining a broken and desperate existence.

It is an unfortunate fact that something that was once considered holy was, in desperation and a desire to win a bloody war, changed to become something that those under our protection now mostly fear. For their peace of mind, as well as preventing inconvenient inquiries from the Church of the Sun, those of us who are undead disguise ourselves as the living.


End file.
